PARENTS could be banned from parking outside schools in a bid to combat childhood obesity.
Health chiefs in Greater Manchester want to take the drastic step of introducing residents-only parking around schools to encourage more children to walk or cycle in.
A report from Greater Manchester Health Commission, which has been sent to the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA), also recommends more 20 mph zones in residential side streets to create more spaces to allow safe outdoor play.
The measures come as childhood obesity figures reveal on average almost 10 per cent of four and five-year-olds and more than 18pc of 10 and 11-year-olds in Greater Manchester are obese. Manchester has the region’s highest obesity rate, and 13th highest local authority figure nationally, with almost a quarter of 10 and 11-year-olds dangerously overweight, according to the government’s child measurement programme. Forecasts predict that more than 1.7m men and women in Greater Manchester will be overweight by 2020.
Director of the Greater Manchester Public Health Network, Will Blandamer, said: “The basic idea is to try and make walking and cycling and active travel as easy as possible and particularly to promote it among children.
“Twenty mile-per-hour zones have had success elsewhere and now we are asking what else can we do to make areas around schools as safe and pleasant for children as possible?
“Walking buses are already in use at a lot of schools but it's about exploring as many opportunities as possible because we cannot continue to have obesity figures at the levels they are.”
The GM Health Commission, which is made up of health, education and council bosses from across Greater Manchester, has worked extensively on ideas to improve life expectancy and tackle obesity.
Earlier this year it rolled out 'healthier' salt shakers, with fewer holes, to 900 fish and chip shops in the region.
Health chiefs calculated that if the new shakers - with five holes instead of the average 18 - were introduced in 1,000 chippies it would reduce salt consumption by 28 tonnes per year.
The commission is also working on a new healthy catering checklist for takeaways.
Now the report on the parking ban has been sent to AGMA, GM Health Commission will lobby councils to introduce the measures.
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I'm all for it. I used to walk to school in all weathers spending the bus fare my Mum gave me in the sweet shop. However, the alleged 28 tonnes of salt saved in chip shops isn't finding itself on the roads ;-)
An excellent idea. Perhaps it should be accompanied by some serious efforts to make cycling safer, so that kids can cycle to school.
Have they considered enforcement costs of such a proposal.
How are you going to police every school gate and stop parents doing a 5 second drop or pick up right outside the school gate.
They do it on the yellow school keep clear markings at the moment.
Another idea might be for this organisation to protest at the Government for selling off school playing fields up and down the country for development.
perhaps all mps could also walk
Perhaps ensuring every child went to their nearest school would make a bigger difference.
I'm all for older children making their own way to school but 5-10 year olds usually need to be taken and collected. The government wants parents to work but who has time to walk their children to and from school and then walk back home to collect the car to get to work on time?
Interfere with people, that is what councils are always doing nowadays. Instead of painting more yellow lines on the pavements why don't the councils keep the pavements free of snow and ice?
What is the main reason why parents don't let their children walk to school? Because they are frightened of their children being attacked. You ask them. And what are the councils doing about that? Ignoring the criminals to concentrate on political correctness.
I must share this one: why were bins not emptied in Bolton last week? Because the dustbin lorries couldn't get through since the roads had not been gritted. Double whammy.
What a pathetic idea. In twenty years the NHS will be buckling under the weight of type 2 diabetes, as all the fat kids of today become the fat adults of tomorrow, and this is what they have come up with? And salt shakers with less holes? This is the exact kind of lazy wishful thinking that brought us to the edge of global disaster as climate change creeps toward the irreverible. can we please get some people with actual brains into power!!!
excellent and lets have the idiots like the one in your picture proscecuted for parking on th wrong side of the road with headlights on and the cars that stop on the zig zags just to drop off their children
Fine if your kids can walk safely to school. I'm lucky and my kids don't have to put themselves at risk in order to walk - however this is not the case for many families and this is another case (like the congestion tax) of our polical leaders putting their own ideals before the genuine welfare of the council tax paying constituents and dressing it up as an anti-obesity, it's for your own good, initiative. Vote them out at the earliest opportunity.
Walk i never did anything else at School age.Cycles were never allowed on School property. I even walked to work every Sunday Morning there were no Buses at 6 am in the morning.
If it's anything like Oldham, the council will prosecute motorists in the white areas with enthsiasm, while drivers in other aread who cause much more of a problem parking on double yellow lines and Zig Zags are never bothered, despite constant complaints from nearby residents. As ever one rule for one and another for the rest.
Not a problem with this, but when it's bouncing down with rain in the play ground and your stood with with your 2 young children, can you ask the teachers to open the doors a bit earlier rather than chatting with a brew watching the kids get soaked.
OK we now have an "equality" based admission procedure for schools. This means that pen-pushing bureaucrats have decreed that because you have a job, you can't send your kids to the local school, you have to take them to a cr*p school 3 miles away. Because you have a job, you now need to drive the 3 miles to that school,otherwise you won't be able to get to work on time. Meanwhile, the same Pen-pushing bureaucrats who drive to work, (with free car parking, or at least heavily subsidised) have decided that the naughty employed people are using their cars too much. The bureaucrats will now employ even more bureaucrats (higher council taxes to pay their wages btw) to fine you for having the temerity to drive to the school across town they've forced to take your children to. If you sacked everyone at your local town hall, would you notice the difference?
michael cobbledick, denton
As if!! They will roll in there big 3.0l V6 Jags
Its not the kids that are lazy, its the parents. They would much rather drive. Whats needed is an incentive to walk, how about school finishing 10 minutes earlier for walkers. That would get the kids thinking.
jeffb, buxton
“Lets have the idiots like the one in your picture prosecuted for parking on the wrong side of the road with headlights on”
Jeff I think that all that Turkey has gone to your head, can’t you see that the car in the picture is a Taxi and so the rules of the road don’t apply to him, he can park on any side of the road he wants and as for the headlights being on, please don’t forget that only ONE will be working.
This idea will not stop the parents who think its ok to drop the kids off outside school while only just stopping long enough to do so, and WHY do they always let them out on the side where the traffic is?
There is a conspiracy, and it is all fitting into place, day by day, year by year. This country is finished. All these things are adding up, one y one.
Has anyone considered parents like me who are disabled and cannot walk far or particularly quickly and therefore have to rely on the car for taking my daughter to school and then getting to work on time. I've only got another eighteen months before my daughter goes to senior school but there are other disabled parents out there. And as a point of fact my daughter eats healthily, does lots of other activity and is very slender so walking to school will not change her lifestyle merely cause me more crippling pain.
ridiculous idea for working parents like myself and my wife and many others like us. My 6 year old son walks to school with his grandma in the mornings, and I collect him straight from work after school (as do many of the parents of children at his school) the school is a 10-15 minute walk from our house (the Primary School his older brother and sister went to which was a 3 minute walk away was demolished in council cut-backs to be replaced by a money making Private Nursing home) there is no way I could get from work to home to drop the car off and then walk to school to pick him up in time. Yes there are undoubdtedly a small minority of parents at some schools that use the car out of convenience or running late or to avoid the rain, but most parents have to work around working lives with grand parents or child minders, or like me, picking them up straight from work. If the goverment and local councils want to do something to help encourage parents to alk children to school, then why not ensure every school has affordable or free before/after school supervision to enable parents to have the time to be able to walk children home(my sons school has breakfast club but no after school club)
The behaviour police are at it again. Is there no end to where these fascists wish to extend their control tentacles into people's lives?
Standard Stalinist cobblers from the Manchester City Council politburo which continues to believe that there are no limits on the the extent to which it can control and micro-manage the behaviour of private citizens. What next - cameras which detect the speed at which parents are walking their kids to school? I'm not even bothering to get cross about this, because the day of reckoning is coming - i.e. the local elections in May.
"AGMA... also recommends more 20 mph zones in residential side streets to create more spaces to allow safe outdoor play."
What? Why do certain people have this perception that their darling little demigods should have the divine right to play in the road?
What we need is the enforcement of the existing 30mph limit and teaching people how to cross the road - not more stupid schemes like this and speed humps.
failinge high school is a night mare to drive past coaches parked cars taxis all blocking the pelican crossing and they dont care about parking on the yellow zig zag lines thats the golden rule not to park any where near a school.but i guess some parents are just too soft ,grow up ppl my little one gets the bus there and back to and from school in all wethers shes 5 '5" at 11 years old.
Id like to se wardens taking pcs then if they try to drive away they get a fine £70 in the post with photographic evidence too back it up thats why there is zig zag lines saying parking at no time.....follow the rules.
Get some wardens to clamp cars with a release fee of £100 and a wardens ticket of £70 this will deter every school should have a warden.......this would deter illegal parking.
What! How times have changed. My Primary School was walking distance of 1 mile, then came progress & greedy estate agents with big ideas. By the end of Primary School, the distance was 3 miles.